


Fennel & Pitch

by shouldhavehoppedfaster



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Dark Comedy, Extended Metaphors, Food Porn, Hannibal is a Cannibal, Highbrow Punnage, M/M, Will is a Cannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 22:26:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4804478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldhavehoppedfaster/pseuds/shouldhavehoppedfaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal has finally proven to Will that murder is beautiful.  Now can he prove that cannibalism is even more beautiful?   </p><p>Spoilers: Yes.  The answer is yes. :)</p><p>Please bring to the table either </p><p>a) a copious suspension of disbelief or </p><p>b) some personal headcanon in which Hannibal is a Magic Monster who can kinda do whatever with impunity.</p><p>My first Hannibal fic :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Wine was a needful thing for both of them that night. Fortunately they had wound up in a home well stocked in quantity without betraying quality past the point where a sophisticated palate would find it objectionable. Their host was presently in no state either to object to their raiding her wine stores or to assist them in binding their many and various wounds. Not that either one of them minded her absence. Achilles was once more binding the wounds of Patroclus, tending to the birth of the most recent scar to grace his protégé’s countenance. A handbowl of warm water burbled back over locks hanging toward the sink, soaked Hannibal’s hand pink as he cradled the back of Will’s head, one hip perched birdlike on the marble counter. The scar on Will’s forehead stood out, uncovered by curly bangs, and Hannibal almost lost himself in a moment of reflection before he summoned a fresh draught of breath and the song between them began anew, sung to the ancient chords of Achilles’ cithara as he sat wrathful on the shore by the black-keeled ships.

“The Greeks called their wine-god Eleftherios,” he sang, or spoke to the deaf-sounding music of the spheres in the silence of Doctor du Maurier’s kitchen. “He who sets you free.”

“We set ourselves free,” this Patroclus, pragmatic, replied, slouched in a chair to submit to the stitching, one arm slung back into the sink, the other cradling a glass of the wine, a foot propped up on the kitchen island opposite. His form and the Doctor’s, intersecting against the light from the corridor, formed a vague shape on the kitchen wall like the Greek letter psi.

“From prisons, and glass, and the reach of Jack Crawford.” Hannibal could always concede a point while simultaneously almost dismissing it as unimportant. “Eleftherios freed those Greeks who followed him from the very society of their fellow-man. He set them apart. Above. No law, not human law nor law of any god, not even his own, could hold him who gave himself truly to the vine. Liminal figures with no company but their own.”

Silence from Will, but not an uncomfortable one. Another bowlful of water poured through his hair and he heard the Doctor continue as though they were both standing in the rain outside of the house, with Alana, there, on the pavement, and the rain blushing pink with the taint of gore.

“You know the story of Prometheus, and how he was supposed to have given fire to man, to make him as an equal to the gods. But it was a fennel stalk into which Prometheus drew the flame, and pitch which kept the flame alive within. And a fennel stalk topped with pitch is the wand which is carried by Eleftherios. So even then, when man was nothing, he sought to free them from that nothing and make them something. More.”

In the rain, Hannibal turned to Will, lifted his hand toward the gaping wound in his dear friend’s stomach. In the kitchen, Will’s eyes opened. “Prometheus… ended up chained to a rock, didn’t he? Having his… his liver eaten? Everyday? Forever?”

A catlike curl of a smile. “Worth the trouble, to cause such mischief?” Was it a question? It sounded like one, but it may have been a statement of personal opinion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, most of this opening conversation was aimed directly at making the Aeschylus pun later. The rest was to foreshadow the whole liver thing, and generally to make it sound as pretentious as some of the conversations on the show. I am unrepentant :D


	2. Chapter 2

If it was a question, at any rate, no answer was forthcoming. But Will did sit up, bow his head, sip from the wine – Eleftherios? – and allow Hannibal to draw the towel which had been guarding the edge of the kitchen sink over his head, gently moving it to soak up loose moisture from the curls while being cautious not to molest the freshly sewn stitches along the side of his face.

“What are we going to do with her?” Will asked. The towel pooled down around his bare shoulders and draped over each side of his chest, his chin turning and lifting in tandem with his eyes as they sought Hannibal’s with a fearless directedness. “We can’t stay here long. We should wake her up. She’ll be able to help you with that bullet, right?” Hannibal had, of course, insisted in seeing to Will’s wounds, staidly persevering in ignoring his own.

“We can stay here long enough. Let her sleep. You can help me with it,” Hannibal sounded entirely unconcerned about everything, as though there weren’t a single potential outcome of this course of action he hadn’t thought through and thoroughly approved. It was contagiously comforting. “I’ll show you how. Talk you through it. Likely to be something you will need to learn sooner or later, at any rate.”

In the chapel, a smile shared, a hand lifted to shoulder. In the kitchen, Hannibal rises, steps back, pushes up on the ball of one foot to sit up on the countertop. His hands work to loose the knot in the arms of the shirt he’s tied around his upper midriff to keep pressure on both sides of the wound. Will stands from the kitchen chair in front of the sink, moves to join him, and soon his hands are joining in the effort, tugging at the tight-corded coils of sleeve until they droop free.

“Are you going to eat her?”

The words finally draw a reaction from the Doctor, mild though it may be—a sting. “I?” is the point of contention.

Will’s eyes found something to do down around the level of the bullet hole in Hannibal’s torso. “Well—“

When no words were threatening to follow up upon that ‘well,’ Hannibal guided Will’s hand to the antiseptic sponge he’d laid out in a bowl on the counter and continued the conversation while coaching Will’s hand with his own in the niceties of cleaning out wounds. “You once told me that you did not have my appetite.” He paused, but not long enough for Will to either confirm or deny. “I had thought that upon the bluff you had shown me your teeth.”

“Shown them to you. But used them?” Not like Hannibal. Not tearing out a man’s throat. “I’ve never… actually eaten anyone before.”

“Yes, you have.”

“… yes, I have,” Will echoed back. He knew that much, of course. But it didn’t count. Not in his mind. He was trying to put that into words, but Hannibal did it for him.

“But only as though through a glass—darkly—not of your own design.”

Will nodded.

Pale lashes stole Hannibal’s eyes from Will’s view, breaking eye contact for a momentary consultation with the kitchen faucet, the gleam of light from the hallway reflected off of it. “And so here we are, again. Shall I pull the old line, Will? Tell you that you’d like it if you’d only try it?” This last bit, almost jovial, a mockery of a line delivered by a father to a child reluctant to touch his broccoli. His eyes veered back to meet Will’s again in a fixed, relaxed mingling. It made Will laugh, almost despite himself, the dark giggle rising from his depths like a summoned kraken. 

“You were right,” he had to admit. “Before.” On that last word, the smile faded just enough to make Hannibal wonder whether Will was worried he would like eating people… or whether he was worried he wouldn’t, for the sake of their new life, just fledged from its cliffside nest.

Hannibal gave him a moment to retreat within those concerns. Or else gave himself a moment to try to read them more clearly in Will’s features. Then he lifted his shoulders and rolled them backward in a posture of easy certainty. “And I may be right a second time. There is only one way to find out for sure.”

Will paused, a half-step back turning awkwardly into a step aside to rinse out the sponge in the sink. “Doctor du Maurier?”

The thought threatened to bring a smile to Hannibal’s face, but he suppressed it with an amused pursing of his lips and an easily tossed laugh of a, “No.” Then, settling back, he continued, “No, I think our kind host may wait. Perhaps, if your appetite proves… lacking,” that word most gently phrased to spare the notion of any disappointment, “She may yet live to see us leave this place.”

There was surprise in Will’s eyes, there was nothing he could do to hide it. “You’d leave her alive?”

“I don’t care to dine alone, Will.”

One corner of Will’s mouth drew upward, confused, his brow tangled, confounded, “And… after? If I don’t...?” The notion of Hannibal putting down his own appetite for the lack of someone to share it with was almost too large and cosmic a thing to put into words. Hannibal took the vocal floundering in stride. He lifted his chin a degree or two in a confidently jaunty angle, and repeated:

“I don’t care to dine alone. Not anymore.” 

[BRIGHT WHITE, SPLASH OF RED, TERRIFYING SCREECHING, CLATTER OF STICKS, CLANGING OF CHIMES]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was writing this, after this last line my mind just went blank and all I could hear was the theme song in my head. So I had to try to inflict it on you guys, too.


	3. Chapter 3

Hannibal had plans for Bedelia, of course. But this first meal— he had something else in mind. He knew that appetite lurked in Will. He could smell it. He had only to lure it out without frightening it away. Something private, something cozy. No victim making charmingly unsettling conversation at table. Yet something intimate. Something to let Will get his hands dirty and still feel comfortable.

He was rolling these things over in his mind while guiding Will through the process of cleaning his wound. The shot went through and through, and at this point if anything essential had been hit, he’d be feeling it by now. A few stitches in his back, and he was glancing over his shoulder in quiet approval before turning himself to rest on his elbow on the countertop. “One more set ought to do,” he twitched a smile for Will to catch with a well-synched glance, only to catch Will’s wrist when it came in with the needle. “One moment. In the satchel, a shot of analgesic.”

It was Will’s turn to put on the look of amusement. “What? I watched you take a knife to the back at Muskrat Farms and you looked like you were on a particularly boring museum tour. You’re asking for a pain killer for a few stitches?”

“It will be I fear more than a few stitches. Do you see how the skin is unevenly torn, just here? You’ll need to resect it for a clean stitch.”

“Resect it,” Will was opening up the satchel on the kitchen island, withdrawing the requested hypodermic needle and looking over some of the other implements with which he was entirely unfamiliar.

“Cut away the torn edge to make a clean one.”

Will looked back, one brow lofted toward his hairline. He lifted a pair of long-handled surgical scissors with a short blade. Hannibal nodded, once, took a breath and leaned back onto the counter, one foot in the sink, one arm drawn back under his head to give him a little bit of a vantage point from which to watch and advise. 

But Will’s work was commendable. The injection of local anaesthetic was cleanly delivered, and he didn’t fumble overmuch with the scissors, snipping delicately along the longest edges of the wound. Hannibal watched with lazily lidded eyes, only speaking up when the resection was complete. “It would be wise to increase the length of the incision so that the resected ends will not be as difficult to draw together.”

Will nodded as though that made perfect sense. Which, for all he knew, it could do. He was never a surgeon, after all. He laid the scissors on the edge of the sink so that their cutting edges were hovering above the depression of stainless steel. He returned to the kitchen island and the satchel there unrolled. He found a small, delicate scalpel, raised it for Hannibal’s inspection.

“Come, now, Will. Have a little ambition.”

Will might have reddened at the cheek a little bit under the goad of Hannibal’s teasing. It was hard to tell, as he turned away, coming up with something that felt a little more substantial in his hand. A longer blade, more robustly curved.

“There, that has a little heft to it. It feels nice to hold,” Hannibal murmured from his place on the counter. Familiar with the implement with which Will was approaching him again.

“How far should I extend the cut?” Will’s eyes surveyed the landscape of the doctor’s torso, mentally drawing the line along which to cut, standing at an angle with his feet planted at shoulder width in order to apply the blade to flesh.

“To the bottom of the rib,” Hannibal advised him in a lulling monotone.

“What—here?” Will gestured with the cool handle of the blade. “That cut would run perpendicular to the one I just resected.”

“No, not there. The inner edge.”

“Wh—“ Will broke off when Hannibal lifted his free arm from his side and gestured to the spot in question. A straight line, sure, but a good six or seven inches of straight line. “What are we doing?” All at once uneasy, disoriented.

“If memory serves, Will, it is – once more – my turn to provide the meat.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You’re not serious.”

It wasn’t a difficult conclusion to which to leap. After all, Hannibal Lecter was lying there on the kitchen counter, one arm under his head, one knee cocked up into the air, shirtless and bleeding, and had this little shit-eating grin on his face while he professed his intent to be butchered.

“I’m quite serious.” And, even though his self-assured little smile didn’t fade, his tone of voice was enough to convince Will that he was, at the very least, not kidding. “You’re to have your first purposeful taste of flesh. I don’t wish you also to be stressed for the well-being of its source. I know precisely where the meat we’ll want lies. I’ll teach you how to take it – it will be a useful skill. And I do promise I will stop you short of killing me,” he added with a boyish tilt of his head, quite playful.

“But you’re not going to be under -- I mean, there’s the anaesthetic, but that’s just topical, right?”

“I’ll be alright. The museum tour, you recall?”

“That was a… light stabbing. This is… major surgery, Hannibal. If you move--”

“I won’t move,” a kind, assuring interjection.

Shaking his head, Will turned aside to walk in a small circle to clear his head, scrubbing his hand over his mouth. “But if you do—I’m already going to be in the dark in there as it is. We should at least, like… tie you down, or something, right?” he squinted back in Hannibal’s direction, less than confident.

Hannibal’s eyes were waiting for him, an easy gaze to counter Will’s strained look, a flicker of jocularity teasing at the corners of his mouth. “If you prefer your Prometheus… bound,” he ribbed Will gently. And made a nice literary pun at the same time. Like he does.

It was enough to break the tension, sending Will’s eyes rolling toward the ceiling in an expression of frustration to mask the little smile the pun brought to his lips. 

“But I assure you, Will. I won’t move. I know very well how dangerous it would be to do so. So unless you doubt me, or else… have other motivations for your suggestion…” Will looked away, bit down at the inside of his cheek, biting back an answer. “Then binding will not be necessary.”

A moment, a deep, thoughtful breath, and Will shook his head. “I’ll take your word for it,” he finally muttered, fighting to keep a rueful smile from his face as he came close again, taking a deep breath and placing his feet steadily once more at shoulder width. He rested his left hand flat against Hannibal’s sternum, a steadying gesture – though whether it was meant to steady Hannibal or himself, only god knows. Then, with a quick glance up to meet Hannibal’s eyes, he applied the blade to the topmost edge of the resected skin, and then began to press down. He pressed gently, at first, and then with increased pressure until the blade was sliding through flesh, creating a new crimson line which began to drip across Hannibal’s stomach and down to the countertop in long lines which branched out along the contours of his form like the points of a buck.

Hannibal, true to his word, did not move. When the first cut was made to the correct point, “Once more, and more deeply,” he instructed, before, as is his common custom, he once more struck up conversation. “Push down as hard as you like; get a little of your own back for that smile I gave you. Or for quite nearly having your head open. It really is the least I could do.”

Will let out a little snort of mirth in the middle of his efforts, pausing just long enough to say, “You’re just – goading – me at this point, Hannibal. You do realize that this time I’m the one with the blade in your innards, right?”

“I realize. You could kill me right now, and pretty easily, too. And with your newfound admiration of blood in the moonlight, combined with our personal history, I could hardly blame you.”

“And yet… here you are. Still goading me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you wanted me to kill you.” Will paused, hesitating. “You don’t want that, do you? This wasn’t your way of trying to stop.” That just sounded wrong to Will, even as the words were leaving his mouth, his lips twisted in disbelief.

“No, I had no plans to let you stop me. But should it happen that way, I can think of few other places I would rather perish than at the hands of one who would appreciate the act as well as I might,” Hannibal’s voice arched toward the professorial, trilled past the poetic, and otherwise gave no indication that even as he spoke Will Graham was finding his way through the wall of muscle below his ribs and opening up his abdominal cavity.

“So your good cheer at Muskrat Farm? That wasn’t just an act? You would have actually been content to go out that way?” Will narrowed his eyes, still half-incredulous, but a least a little intrigued.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say content. Mason Verger put on a tacky parody of a dinner party and to be perfectly honest the menu his good doctor ran past me sounded ill-conceived at best. But at least they both seemed to be enjoying themselves, so perhaps it wouldn’t have been a complete waste. Ah! You’re through,” he sounded as delighted to have his viscera exposed as most people would be to find that their Christmas parcels had come in the post. “Wash your hands quite thoroughly and then the blade.”

Will’s right hand was clean, as yet, at least of blood. But his left hand was soaked in a red that shifted from dark crimson to brilliant cherry when he held it to the light. Beautiful. He stepped down along Hannibal’s legs and nudged the hot water on with his elbow, fastidious about not getting blood on the tap handle even as it was beginning to pool down on the kitchen floor. “I can’t believe you’re actually enjoying this,” he shook his head, but couldn’t help but be charmed by the strange, surreal bonding activity.

“I would give you more ample proof of my enjoyment, I believe, if I were not losing quite so much of my blood. At any rate, what is there not to enjoy? Abel Gideon once asked me how I thought I might taste if someone did to me the things I did to him. I had to yield to his fancy that I would be particularly delectable. And now that is a gift which I will give to you, dearest Will. I only worry that I will spoil your palate for any lesser cuts of meat we happen across in future. Still, why should your first morsel not be perfection? Let us carry on.”

Will, not wanting to wipe off his newly scrubbed hands on any piece of cloth in the room, just held them up to drip dry. It conveniently doubled as a ‘well, can’t argue with that’ gesture. “OK, let’s do it,” he agreed. “What am I looking for?”

“You’ll take two fingers of your left hand, slide them into the wound and pull quite gently toward you. Just enough to allow your other hand room to work. Feel in the corner of the opening closest to my sternum, and reach with your fingers as though to feel underneath my ribs. Quite close to the underside of my sternum you should find a small, bulbous organ. And to the left of that, you’ll feel the pulse of quite a large vein. You’ll want to be cautious not to nick that when you begin to cut.” He began to sound a little breathless as Will followed the instructions, step by step. But for all that, the lack of breath and the dearth of blood, he stayed quite still and never lost his air of prim jocularity. “Unless – of course – you’ve decided to kill me after all. In which case, that is your quickest option. Let me know when you’ve found the vein,” he summed up quickly, and let his head rest back on his arm, closing his eyes for a moment to just feel the fingers working inside of him.

“Are you alright?” This was a bad idea. This was an insane idea. Why was he doing this again? Will could tell Hannibal’s heart was racing, though you’d never know it to look at him. His own heart was beating pretty fast, too. “I can’t…”

“I do apologize, Will. Your left, not my left,” Hannibal spoke up, not even having to open his eyes to feel where Will was having difficulty. 

“I think I… oh, y—yeah, I found it. What next?”

Hannibal took a moment to gather his thoughts. His eyes still closed, he merged together as one with Will Graham in the kitchen, looking over his own body and moving Will’s hands with his own hands, their stark black skin bloody in the kitchen light, their crown of antlers splaying proudly to frame the small chandelier light over the sink. “Keep your fingers moving to your left and up around the vein, they’ll feel a surface which they can follow. It should feel quite smooth, quite soft. Keep following that surface until you feel a small ridge formed by another vein underneath. Keep that vein on your right when you begin to cut. If you would like, keep feeling to the left, and you will feel that surface your fingers are following curve into a protrusion. This is the lower posterior section of the right lobe of my liver. This is your prize, enriched in flavor over the years by the finest wines mankind has to offer. Take it, Will,” he broke off his lofty narration with those three words and a gasp of air, quickly moderated into slower breathing as he struggled, for once, to stay in the moment, not retreat into his memory palace to escape the pain. He wanted to be here for this, to be here for Will, to observe and also to participate.

Will could see he was struggling, but saw in his eyes the earnestness of his desire to share his flesh. And, after all, he was already open on the kitchen counter. In Mason Verger’s words, they had committed. This was happening. He could feel the section in question as if his own hands had performed the excision hundreds of times before. He could feel the great beast’s points sprouting from his skull. The gore covered his hands and painted them in its glory while he took the knife to his Prometheus’ liver, the avenging eagle in human form, but not after vengeance. This was an act of love. Of sharing. Of opening up and letting in. Soon enough, Will Graham held his prize in both hands, removing it and showing it to the breathless doctor on the counter as someone might show a newborn baby to its labor-weary mother. And Hannibal beamed with a big, loopy grin of blood deprivation and pride when presented with the flesh prize which he had helped his dear friend take from him. He napped in between instructing Will on how to close off the bleeders and stitch up the long surgical wound along the bottom of his ribcage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I do apologize, Will. Your left, not my left."
> 
> I almost didn't put this bit in, because of their being so in synch with one another otherwise, but my reasoning: Hannibal is used to seeing this process from the other side, so he talks about it from the perspective of the killer. Will, on the other hand, is empathizing with Hannibal as victim, which has also been his usual role in this exceptionally strange and beautiful relationship.
> 
> And I thought the levity of the mix-up would compliment the dark subject matter :)


	5. Chapter 5

When Will woke him again, his head was flat on the kitchen counter instead of on his arm, and as he craned his neck backward he could see the glistening slice of liver waiting on a cutting board.

“Are you okay?” Will asked him, feeling his forehead for signs of fever. “Should I wrap it up and put it in the fridge? Let me take you to bed, you need to rest,” he tried to coax Hannibal into allowing, but the doctor just let out a breath that might have been a laugh if it had any voice behind it, and shook his head. 

“I’m quite well, Will. Kind though it is of you to worry for me. Let us finish what we started. Soon the sun will rise and we will have our breakfast.” He tried to angle an elbow down against the kitchen counter where he had just finished serving his stint as a cut of meat, but his body wouldn’t quite let him, yet. So, with a gentle cough, he reclined once more, mouth slightly open, looking up to the ceiling and then to the piece of liver with a speculative look. “Will, go to her refrigerator and tell me what she has by way of groceries.”

Since it’s really hard not to take such reasonable orders from someone who had just guided him through cutting out part of his liver, Will promptly went and did so. From time to time Hannibal would order something taken out of the fridge, or put back in, or would request that Will search the cabinets for a certain spice.

Soon Hannibal had Will whisking together a nice fennel sauce and glazing it over the liver. Setting one pan on to sear and another in the oven to finish the cook. Thinly slicing a potato and crowning each slice with a sprig of rosemary and a few grains of sea salt. By the time the sun was coming up Hannibal had risen from his prone state and changed into a robe, left casually open down the front, baring his stitches to the sunlight as he laughed with Will, teaching him to carve little rosettes out of a red pepper. Standing behind him, one hand resting on the scar on Will’s stomach, the other hand guiding Will’s as Will held the kitchen tongs, making sure he got just the perfect sear on the liver and helping him transfer it into the oven to finish.

It was just enough for a beautiful breakfast for two out on the patio. And they could hardly have asked for better weather.

 

The End :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line I had in an earlier draft but cut because it interrupted the flow:
> 
> “In point of fact, you’ll be one up on me, after this. You’ll have tasted me; I’ll not have tasted you. We’ll have to right that iniquity one day.”
> 
> So maybe a part two in the future, if inspiration strikes :)


End file.
